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National Geographic : 2005 Oct
Contents
One by one, the islands of Hawai'i were born from the volcanic hot spot that still fires eruptions on the Big Island. And one by one, the relentlessly moving Pacific plate has carried the islands to the northwest. The plate travels on average less than four inches a year, so it's taken nearly 30 million years for Kure Atoll to reach its spot as the most distant of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Along the way the forces of time and sea reshape and level the islands into volcanic rem nants, atolls, and shoals-all destined to keep moving and sink and join the chain of seamounts that stretches submerged beyond Kure. These outliers are politically part of the state of Hawai'i, except for the islands of Midway Atoll, which remains a U.S. territory. Though early Hawaiians from southern Polynesia left signs of worship and occupation on the close-in islands of Necker and Nihoa, nothing about the North western Hawaiian Islands invites permanent settlement. Yet they bear a legacy of heavy human impact: hundreds of thousands of birds killed in AMiA the early 1900s to feather the international millinery trade; guano min 7 -. .AREA ing on Laysan Island; the thousands of military personnel stationed on SFNLARGED Midway who fought decisive battles during World War II. i~i t i I/' .I l ,ii.ii . I 'in ' Ilnlmt/
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